Friday, January 22, 2010

Poetry 2010 Sneak Peek List

Here’s the scoop!After scanning the recent publisher catalogs and web sites and talking with reps at the ALA Midwinter conference, here’s the list of poetry books for young people that we can be on the lookout for in 2010. Please let me know of any others I can add.

Looks like another interesting crop, with more topical anthologies, intriguing verse novels, updated classics, new voices, fun favorites, science connections, sequels and more. There was lots of buzz at ALA about Stephanie Hemphill’s new Wicked Girls and Marilyn Singer’s Mirror, Mirror and Douglas Florian’s Poetrees and Pat Mora’s Dizzy in Your Eyes and I got a quick look at many of the titles on the list. I can’t wait to get them all, read them, and share them with you. Check back here from time to time and I’ll update this posting with new additions, rather than posting new lists. Happy new year in poetry!

I saw a couple pages of MIRROR, MIRROR: A BOOK OF REVERSIBLE VERSE by Marilyn Singer (your #35) last Saturday at an SCBWI program and it looked incredibly interesting/clever/wants to be on my book shelf.

I know, I know, I'm SO excited about this wealth of poetry for young people-- and there may well be a few more titles to add as the year goes on. Either way, I think there are some wonderful gems coming our way.

That's hilarious, Elaine, that we both did a "sneak peek" on the same day! Great minds, indeed!

Thanks, all, for stopping by and commenting. I'll be getting these books, reading them, and reviewing them as I am able, all year long, so please stop by again periodically. Sylvia

Kristine O'Connell George is one of my favorite poets. So I was so happy to see that she has a new book: Emma's Dilemma. I'm not sure if anyone has talked about this yet, but I recently visited her website and found that she has an amazing tool called Kids Poetry Bookstore. On this site, you can do a number of things. There are many tabs such as "new releases," "Loved, but out of print titles,"teaching poetry," "writing poetry," and many other search tools all related to children's poetry. I'm so excited about exploring this site further.Thanks for the list Sylvia!

I'm new to the children's poetry world, but my Candlewick book is coming out February 7th and it is four poems. One for each of the seasons. The book is called, All Around the Seasons. (is it politically incorrect to mention this? Is so, I apologize!) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Barney Saltzberg

Thanks so much for the scoop on 2010 children's poetry books, Sylvia! I'm printing this out, too, and can't wait to check them out. Since you asked, my picture book NAME THAT DOG! will be out from Dial on April 1, 2010, and I hope you'll consider adding it. It's an alphabet book of poems about dogs and their names. Thanks.

Hi SylviaYou might like to add to your list of Children's poets Lorraine Marwoodand John Malone and myself. :)I am about to start a blog/site re children's poetry but John and Lorraine's sites are :http://lorrainemarwoodwordsintowriting.blogspot.com/John doesn't appear to have a poetry blog but his book updates are posted here: http://sawriters.org.au/general/john-malone

About Me

Sylvia Vardell is a professor and author of the ALA bestseller POETRY ALOUD HERE, also POETRY PEOPLE, CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN ACTION, and the co-editor of THE POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY series (for K-5 and for 6-8), as well as the first digital anthologies of poetry for young people, the POETRY TAG TIME series-- all in collaboration with poet Janet Wong. Vardell is also the poetry columnist for ALA’s BOOK LINKS magazine. A frequent speaker at conferences, Vardell chaired the NCTE Poetry Award committee and has served as a consultant to the Poetry Foundation.